In the days following the presidential inauguration, Colorado joined two other states in a lawsuit against the new Trump administration.

The Department of Justice called out Denver's mayor, who has been vocal against the president's plans for mass deportation.

And around 20 Coloradans were pardoned for their involvement in the January six takeover of the US Capitol.

This is a pivotal time for our nation.

And what will the impact of this political shift be on Colorado?

We have a lot to sort through on this week's Colorado Inside Out.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We have Patti Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword.

Alton Dillard, political analyst and media and public relations consultant with the Diller Group and former election spokesperson for the city and county of Denver.

Sage Norman, a conservative columnist and commentator and strategist and owner of Anthem Communications.

And Luigi Del Puerto, editor with the Colorado Politics and Denver and Colorado Springs Gazette.

On the day after Inauguration Day, Colorado joined 17 other states in a lawsuit to block President Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship and that is a decades old immigration policy that has guaranteed citizenship to children born in the U.S. no matter what the status is of their parents, and also, the city of Denver has been on the kind of target of the Department of Justice this week.

This is being named for being a sanctuary city.

Patti, let's start with you.

All things immigration that's come out this week.

Donald Trump has not yet parachuted into Aurora to start the mass deportation there.

But certainly with all the executive orders that started coming out Monday, Aurora doesn't look safe and neither really does anywhere else.

So he came out with the birthright executive order, which is one that is united.

A lot of states people disagree on immigration, but the birthright idea that people born in this country can be citizens is such bedrock in this.

I mean, it's gone through many permutations over the years, but it is a bedrock belief.

And polls show that most Americans believe that.

They also believe the border should be more secure.

But what to do about the people who are here is really dividing people.

The sanctuary city issue, where basically Michael Johnston and the legislature back in 2019 said that we would not cooperate with ICE that the local police don't have to cooperate with ICE actions.

We are going to be in the spotlight because of that, although we are certainly not the only city.

Chicago's in the spotlight for that.

But it is just going to be a really tough time.

And I do think Mike Johnston might want to pack up his toothbrush as well as that jacket he's wearing again, because they are saying they will look at those officials for action.

Alton?

Well, Colorado has joined the lawsuit to try to, you know, have their protection in there for the birthright citizenship.

But again, we're getting amnesia.

Remember this, The loss, if you I'll call it, sort of is all throughout the federal government.

So I'm not an attorney, but who's to say that the Supreme Court that has the similar ideology is going to somehow stand up in that space?

And the other thing, you know, and I know people in all kinds of community, I'm already starting to hear at least rumors of people, even in, you know, certain parts of Denver and in the foothills and stuff who may be getting picked up already.

And then there's also the effects on the schools, because, you know, I think most people can agree we want people who are here and their status is in question who've committed crimes to pay a certain price.

But splitting up families, talking about going back to where we were, where families were separated during the first term, I just think this sets a very dangerous precedent.

Sage one thing that I find interesting and I think Reason magazine pointed this out in one of their articles, is that even though the executive order is not retroactive, if the Supreme Court reinterprets the amendment and says, no, that's not what we meant by, you know, by birth, by being born in the United States, then it would become retroactive.

And so you have a huge issue where folks who are here, you know, maybe their parents were here legally, but they weren't citizens, people who didn't even know about, you know, their parent's legal status are going to all of a sudden be caught up in this.

I think above all that, though, it's a squandered opportunity.

Donald Trump could have come into office and said, look, Denver, other cities run by Democrats, I want to go after the criminals.

And you don't like to cooperate with ICE, but let's make a deal.

You let me take the criminals.

We can leave everyone else.

We're not trying to take everyone's abuela out of their home and send them back to Mexico.

That's not the goal here.

The goal is to make our our streets safer.

And he could have.

He could have hopefully worked out a deal.

I think there are many mayors who probably would have taken him up on that.

But unfortunately, he's thrown everything he can at the wall to see what sticks.

And, you know, cities like Denver are going to buckle down, do everything they can to to defend.

I think that was a missed opportunity.

Luigi, I read an article that you wrote back in July and you said there is no other country that has embraced immigrants like the United States has.

You and your wife became American citizens 12 years ago and your son was born here.

What is going on in your mind as you're watching all this play out?

You know, this fight that we're seeing at the federal level and we're now experiencing in Denver, in Colorado.

This is an issue that I've been writing about for about 20 years.

I Just to reiterate, I think that the United States is the greatest country in the world.

It is the most welcoming of immigrants.

Might or is not even unique, but it is a unique American story.

It is an American story because there is no other country in which you go there in your as a young adult.

In our case, no kids yet, but as a young adult, you work really hard.

You put in the time you are competent and that brings you success.

This idea that if you're born in the United States, you are automatically an American citizen wasn't the norm or wasn't exactly the prevailing policy until around the 1960s or so.

in the 1920s, we decided that Native Americans are, in fact, United States American citizens.

In the 1950s, we had what you call the Brazil Bucyrus program, in which, you know, we got workers from Mexico.

We also decided at that point that their children are not American citizens.

And the key word in the 14th Amendment is this clause that says subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

What does that exactly mean?

And I think that's going to be the focus of a Supreme Court fight, which feel like this executive order really is a setup to get to the United States Supreme Court, for the court to finally decide this issue.

Yeah, it does look like that.

Okay.

Thanks for sharing.

Changes to immigration policies are not the only executive orders or Trump administration plans that will impact Colorado.

Let's go through some of them and I'll start with you.

They're the two big ones for me, of course, are the discussion of drill, baby, drill, especially because we are already at a fairly high point when it comes to energy production.

But what I'm paying attention to is budgetary impacts.

You have both Denver considered a sanctuary city in a tight budget situation.

You have a state legislature trying to find, what, roughly $1,000,000,000 to cut.

And so that will be sort of the cudgel that's held over head of our governments as things progress here.

Now, keep in mind, we're, what, 72 to 96 hours into this new administration and everybody is already on, you know, a fairly high def con level with good reason.

And so if they cut off the spigot at the federal level when it comes to funding, what's going to be the downstream effect on pretty much every system where there's education, whether it's public works?

You just don't know some things that I found interesting from the initial few days, number one, Ukraine.

Okay.

Trump just came out and said that Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine and they are responsible for the reason it hasn't ended.

That's an interesting tone shift from the campaign.

because it's fascinating that he is now being once elected stronger against Vladimir Putin than he was during the campaign, especially considering how many Americans consider Putin to be the bad guy in this war.

But I think that's fascinating.

And I think there's a huge opening there, too.

This ties into energy a bit for U.S. natural gas to play a bigger role in Europe.

Some studies came out, I think, from a year or two ago that show that, you know, if European countries replace Russian natural gas with American natural gas, it reduces emissions by 30% because we do it better than they do.

But one thing another thing that I find that's going to be really interesting to see over the next four years is the battle between these this new elected administration and the bureaucrats.

That's where there's going to be a showdown, come back into office, hiring, freeze cutting DTI programs.

It is going to be a showdown.

I don't think we have ever seen between the administration and the bureaucracy.

And I think that's where they're going to find the most amount of money to be cut.

I think that's where you're going to see probably the most drama within this administration play out.

And that's going to be fascinating for all four years.

that Trump in his state of the in his inauguration speech, said there's only two genders, male and female, and that Ramaphosa is for that for d I programs at the federal level, at the state level, at the city level.

And any program that interacts with federal funding potentially could be cut if they're promoting some sort of a, you know, DI approach to two things.

Not only that, what does it mean for the armed forces, for example, what does it mean for collegiate sports?

Now we've had this, I think this social, cultural war that's been raging now for years and years and years.

And I'm just fact it will be fascinating to see where all of that lines up.

And Patti?

Well, that is going to be a fascinating issue.

Even before the inauguration, which I know you and I were glued to.

Kyle, The emails are coming fast and furious, and one was from the Trump campaign talking about how Colorado had removed him from the ballot and he was going to get his revenge.

Well, Colorado never removed him from the ballot.

We remember the six Coloradans, four Republicans, two unaffiliated who did sue to say he shouldn't be on the primary ballot because of his actions on January 6th.

He was never removed from the ballot.

So you're seeing Donald Trump has never been a fan of Colorado and certainly not Colorado.

Election laws, he called them rigged back in 2016.

So I'm concerned locally what are going to be the ramifications on voting rights on all the different aspects of elections?

It'll happen across the country, but I do think we're in the crosshairs.

And also just talking about January 6th, the pardoning of the almost 1600 people who were arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection at the Capitol, to have Trump say they're hostages and patriots at the same time, we've got the Gaza ceasefire and true hostages coming home.

It was just appalling.

And there are around 20 Coloradans who are.

Pardon?

Correct.

There are about 20, although I know, Lloyd, you reported the grandma Grandma praying grandma doesn't want to be pardoned.

She does not want to be pardoned.

She does not want to be pardoned.

We do have a story.

It's fascinating to read.

If you got the time going and read.

But I think ultimately, in the end of the day, I think her family members are going to be able to persuade her, you got to do what you got to do to keep yourself out of jail.

Okay.

All right.

That'll be interesting to watch to all those people.

Okay.

Colorado Congressional Representative Brittany Patterson, who's with the seventh District, is in her third term, a pregnancy.

So she can no longer make that long flight back and forth to Washington.

And because of that and she is being excluded from voting on measures before the House, she posted this online and it said Soon I will be the only the 14th member to give birth while serving in Congress.

It's clear Congress was not designed with young families and parents in mind.

Remote voting for new parents is a critical step to modernizing Congress and making it more inclusive.

Sage There is a major pushback on making any of that happen.

I think that this is a bipartisan issue.

I think most people look at it and say, hey, you know what, new mothers.

Yeah, they should be they should be able to be given that grace so they can spend time with time but then vote remotely.

That being said, it's not one of those issues that people are banging on the doors to make sure is implemented and because of that, politics is probably going to win.

Beyond all the drama with the administration and Donald Trump being inaugurated, we have to remember that Mike Johnson has a three seat majority in the House, which means for him it's every single vote matters and everything boils down to politics.

So even if he and his heart of hearts is like, Yeah, I'd really like to give him that chance, he's going to go, but I can't afford the votes.

If I can, if I can scrape another vote or two away from Dems wherever I can, I'm going to take it.

Unfortunately, politics wins the, you know, wins, I think, over the long term.

I think the congresswoman and others who support her and I think this is a bipartisan issue even in Congress, I think it will eventually become policy.

I'm just not sure it's going to happen.

And they did introduce a resolution.

But with all that's been going on right now, it hasn't been talked about much.

Loogie this applies to everybody.

And so if you're not there, Republican or Democrat, you're not there.

And so, you know, one of the co-sponsors is a Republican from the state of Texas.

And correct me if I'm wrong, a lot of there's a number of congresspeople that are of potential potentially could be pregnant like Britney and Peterson.

What's startling or stark, what start to see was J.D.

Vance with his kids right on the inauguration day.

And there is a change that's happening in Congress.

We are getting more and more younger people.

That's happening at the federal level.

It's also happening in our state capitol.

Patty?

Well, I'm surprised Johnson hasn't just sent her an Amtrak ticket.

You can still travel by train, but this brings up a bigger issue, which is after the pandemic, with all the zooming and all the remote work we've done, at some point they're going to have to grapple with how you can have people vote remotely, including women who cannot fly because they're too pregnant.

It also gets into other issues that you can see where you might have a Dianne Feinstein situation, where can that person really vote?

How secure is it by proxy or remote voting?

So I can't see anyone wanting to get into this issue right now for a variety of political, personal reasons.

But ultimately, they will have to deal with it.

But right now, the push is on for all federal workers to be in Monday through Friday, too, right?

Yeah.

I just wonder, looking at Speaker Johnson about how much lunch money he lost in middle school.

There's just a weasel factor here.

And the hypocrisy is stunning to me I'm getting flashbacks of the Continental Congress of 1776, where the white guys in the white wigs are the only ones controlling anything.

And so the other hypocrisy in this is Johnson himself is taking advantage of proxy voting.

And so we have to continue to modernize with the times.

And as has been mentioned, you know, it was okay during COVID, But we also have to remember there was a representative who was found in a memory care after missing like a half a year's worth of votes.

So that is a process that they definitely going to have to figure out.

And to the point that's been made as Congress, thank goodness, gets a little younger, you have to treat that as any other workplace and have some protections in especially for expectant mothers.

Okay.

A former top forensic scientist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is facing 102 felonies for allegedly manipulating evidence in DNA tests and concealing it.

And this happened for years.

This has been looked at over the last year.

And Luigi, on Wednesday this week, this woman, Missy Woods, turned herself in Thursday, she went before a judge.

You know, this has been a scandal that has plagued the state with I can't even imagine the ramifications.

The CBI court or Bureau of Investigation said they have found about a thousand Gordon anomaly.

Now they're insisting that none of these cases would actually change the outcome.

But for three cases that we know of, it's already kind of a changed outcome.

The prosecutors have been forced to negotiate and plea.

This case is down to what they were.

That's one.

And I think the last time we looked at this is the the scandal is so big that getting current DNA tests to be done and process is going to take about two years.

This is big.

It's problematic.

You know, the fact that she's now being indicted is not a surprise.

And what surprised me was how, you know, we thought it was going to take a little bit of time before they actually, you know, figure out what they're going to do now it's happening this week.

You know, we were just talking about this last week on the show because rape kits, there's a 517 day delay and there was a problem with delays before Missy Woods.

You know, that whole story came to light.

Patty, We also saw this week that TBI is bringing in a company to kind of help move things along.

But this is such a mess.

Well, they have a Wisconsin company that is looking into how this all could have happened.

Then they have another company that's supposed to be coming in and helping with some of that DNA testing.

And it turns out there was this investigation that went on.

I can't remember if was North Dakota or South Dakota that got involved because of course, this affects every single corner of Colorado.

They got involved.

They looked at 500 of these cases.

So there really are thousands that could have been affected.

But the 500 led to the 102 charges.

It's extraordinary.

It's appalling.

And the fact that twice at least, her supervisors were warned of problems and nothing happened.

And then finally an intern whistleblower said there is something really drastically wrong there.

I've never seen the name of this intern, but that intern deserves an award.

It is incredible how this has thrown the justice system in the state into a mess.

We're not going to get out of it for a long time.

And the justice system is already under the microscope because, you know, we're talking about this in the context of how it's affecting filed cases.

But think about it in terms of the cases, the cases that haven't even been filed because of the fact that this lab work is like, okay, well, you know, rape kit, but we're not finding any male DNA, so we can't file.

This has ramifications across the system.

And I understand it's an allegation at this point.

But you also have to remember that we had something and I'm not trying to conflate the two, but remember, we also had a CDP chemist when it came to water samples.

So is this a capacity thing?

Or as Woods has said in her defense, that it was done in the name of expediency, these places not have enough resources, or is it something more nefarious?

Yeah, I think that the big question we have to be asking is, where did the system go wrong?

Because going, you know, obviously one person's going to be prosecuted and the justice system is going to work itself out that way.

But there obviously were some huge issues going on there because, again, supervisors are warned nothing happens.

An intern is the one who calls us.

So we consider DNA evidence to be the gold standard of evidence in our in our criminal cases.

We've seen people who have been on death row for decades be freed because DNA evidence said, no, you got the wrong person.

So this not only calls into question the legitimacy of every investigation that they've done in the past, it will obviously call into question them in the future, because what are your processes like?

It has far reaching ramifications beyond just this one individual in the cases that they touched.

And, you know, hopefully they can solve that because DNA evidence tends to be the gold standard.

Let's make sure that our DNA evidence is correct.

Let's now talk about some of the highs and the lows from this very big week.

I'll start with you, Patty.

And although there were so many on Monday that you could find, but Lauren Boebert tweeting about Daddy's home was really not the one I needed to see.

Okay.

Mine has to do with the weaponization of the term DNI.

Essentially in my community, the way DNI is being used now might as well be the N-word, because it has become that pejorative.

And that is just an example of the whites is hetero patriarchy that exists.

And somehow they're treating the AI as something that is anti meritocracy.

We are talking about making sure that all voices are heard, all perspectives are learned in the workplace, wherever and somehow people are just, you know, staking their flag.

This is somehow a bad thing.

So one of the ironies I'm watching is that there's this big Facebook movement to boycott any corporations that are rolling back their die.

And it's like butt met is rolling back their DEI process.

So where who where does that part stop?

But the weaponization of the term and this using this as the last stand against the browning of America has to stop.

Okay.

Sage pardons across the board, whether it was Biden's last minute pardons to his family or to Trump pardoning 1500, many of which were violent offenders on January 6th, four years ago.

You know, the Fraternal Order of Police obviously condemned that they endorsed Donald Trump.

So their condemnation, I think, is powerful.

But across we have the and there is no more precedent on pardons.

It changed overnight just like that.

And I think there's egg on everyone's faces for different reasons.

And, you know, I think that we're going to have to we're going to see what that effect is in future presidencies and in this presidency as well.

How much that power is, is is wielded more and more often.

And it's unfortunate.

That something very local.

It was really, really cold.

I get you got to remember, I'm from the tropics, right.

And I was in Arizona for, what, 14 years?

Something like that.

And it was bitter cold.

And then it just laid bare all kinds of problems that happens when it is that cold.

The trash bins, again, my favorite city, Denver, didn't collect trash bins last week as a result.

And it just occurred to me how important it is to have really sustainable, efficient, cheap energy, because when we hit these lows, it's going to be a real problem if we don't have that kind of an infrastructure.

Okay, Please, let's talk about something positive and happy.

Corey And surprisingly, I will take us out to Denver International Airport, which on Wednesday just announced a record breaking year in 2020 for 83 million passengers.

You know, when it was built 30 years ago, the idea was it was going to service at most 50 million.

So we're up to 83 and many of them will get to see a great new piece of art by Detour.

You've seen his murals around town.

This is his first three dimensional piece.

It hangs up on the B concourse.

It's great.

So get out there and look at it.

And mine.

As a communications nerd, I do have to send a shout out to the Do Better Denver social media and also to the Denver police for the how they respond to that do better.

Denver is the one that really sort of shines the light on the fact that we still have drug addicted people, we still have vagrancy and they're not letting it just be pushed into these hotels, but from the communications standpoint, like I always tell my clients, if you're going to be in the social media game, you can't treat it as just like a static website It creates to weight communications.

So when Do Better Denver reaches out with the concern, Hey, what happened at 13th and Lappin for 99% of the time, Denver Police Department will answer.

Sometimes they can be a little vague, but just the fact that they are willing to always respond to an organization that pokes them sometimes multiple times a day.

I just find that admirable from a communications fan.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Sage watching former Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama joking around at the inauguration.

Bush's faces as he was standing up there, a moment of levity and unfortunately, possibly a moment that we're not going to have much more of in the future.

Folks that were on different sides of the aisle that certainly did not agree on most policy issues, Joking around and laughing, I don't know.

That may be a thing of the past.

Okay.

I'm an American citizen, but I'm always an outsider looking in something like that.

And look, the fact that this country has had a peaceful transfer of power, I'm not talking about January six.

I'm talking about this grand American experiment that's been going on for a couple of centuries now.

That to me is a bloody miracle.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Louis.

Do my Hi.

Is gratitude for Paul Andrews, who on Sunday as the National Western Stock Show comes to an end for the year, CEO Paul Andrews will be retiring.

Over the last 15 years, he has hosted the best 16 days in January in Denver.

Paul is also done wonderful stuff for the organization in terms of getting the organization out of debt, stirring the stock show out of the pandemic, and then to record crowds.

And then he's also been working on the redo of the grounds out there, which will allow the stock show to continue to grow and thrive in the future.

Paul has been a friendly face at the stock show.

He's so friendly and a big champion for the ag community.

His grandfather did you know this?

He showed cattle back like 40 years, you know, years ago for for a long time.

So it's in his nature and we are so grateful for his touch on the stock show for so many years.

We appreciate you get out there this weekend if you haven't gone just yet.

All right.

Thanks to you, panel, for joining us and for sorting through that all that has occurred this week.

Thank you for being engaged and watching with us, either here on PBS 12 or on YouTube or listening to our podcasts.

And I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you here next week on PBS 12.

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